


Illusions

by twistedchick



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Bokor, Episode Tag, Episode s02e15, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:41:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life, and death, and Rommie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Illusions

I brought her over into the Andromeda in my arms.

She was so weak. She barely weighed anything at all. I had curled myself over her to protect her when the Than fired on the drift where she lived. That is what I'm supposed to do, protect people. I'm a warship of the Commonwealth; warships are for battle, but they fight to protect humans, and Vedrans, and Nietzschians, and all the Commonwealth's allies, whatever their race or species.

I'm the only one who does that without having to think about it. That's my job, taking care of people, protecting them, fighting for them.

Especially Dylan.

But he wasn't there; he was in command, dealing with other aspects of me. If he had been there, in the entry bay where I jumped when we undocked so suddenly, I would have handed her to him and known she was in good hands, Dylan's hands. Dylan is not always kind to others, but he tries so hard. It's difficult for him with the jump of centuries. I have it much easier, overall. Wars and how they are waged do not change as much as human societies. But he was not there, so I put her on a couch in one of the unused dining salons.

The salon was designed to look like a restaurant in Tarn Vedra, or so the design specs indicated. Many of the recreational areas of me were designed to resemble parts of the home planet of one or another species aboard me. One day, not long ago, Harper went through all the files to see if he could find images of the original places that these parts of me were designed to resemble. Some of them were beautiful, and it made me proud. Some of them don't exist any more.

I didn't know if the little girl would realize that she was sitting on a couch in a room that had been designed to look like the Vedran Queen's favorite restaurant. I thought, when she recovered, I could tell her and maybe Harper or Dylan would recommend a good flavor of ice cream for her while we found someone to take care of her, somewhere. If her parents were not among the dead on the drift, they were among the ill in my halls.

One disadvantage of having an android body is that I can smell food but it never quite tastes the way Harper said it should. He said he'd work on that in the next version of me, whenever he gets it done. I don't know how I'd feel about having another avatar -- not just a bot or android sharing a fraction of my intelligence but a full avatar -- but he promised me he would make sure there was only one of me at a time.

I had to leave her there on the couch; I had to go help Dylan and the crew by doing triage on the refugees in the hall. I put a light blanket over her and went to the hall, where humans were dying as I watched, the light within them flickering out, leaching into the air invisibly.

Humans don't last long enough.

And then the corpses attacked, and the Bokor took over Trance, and I was too busy fighting against a possessed Trance to think of anything else. I fought as hard as I could, as long as I could, and I would have kept fighting if Dylan had not arrived and told me to go to Harper for repairs. It was all I could do to stand, by then. I went to Harper, and I took the forcelance he gave me, set on level eight, and I went through the halls, on every deck I could reach, everywhere I could sense movement that did not bear a heartbeat, and I blew that movement away. On the lower decks that held none of my crew, I gauged my internal alarms to that level and blasted them with the power within my walls.

I took them out. I protected the crew. I protected Dylan. I did my job.

And, after all the Bokor-possessed adults were stilled, and Dylan had given me his thoughts on love as a conundrum to think about -- for I always have time to think, no matter what happens -- I remembered her.

She looked up at me from the couch, and for a moment I distrusted the data I was receiving. Her face was far too calm, too alive. She reached her hands up to me, and I did not even think. I let her come up into my arms; her mother and all her people were gone, and she was alone.

Perhaps my apparition-self was correct and I've become too affected by the emotions this body can feel.

She was possessed, of course. She leaned toward me sweetly, not roughly like the adults, and kissed me on the mouth, breathing the spores into my body, into my circuits and tissues. She didn't know any better, or the Bokor didn't know.

I put her down again. I pulled the forcelance from my belt and shot the last level-eight charge into her heart, and watched until she stopped twitching.

She was the last, the very last. The other bodies had been expelled from the ship already. I carried her into an airlock, put her down as gently as if she were still living, left the airlock and vented it. I did not watch her go, only looked to be sure she was gone. After that I went directly to the decontamination area Harper set up for me when he built me, and gave myself a thorough decontamination, including a shot of Trance's cure.

It took me a while, after that, to realize that I was crying. I had thought it was simply excessive fluid from the chemical wash that I was using, but I could not stop the tears coming into my eyes. I went back with bots, and made sure that the couch in that little light-filled restaurant was as free of spores as the rest of the ship, and when that was done, I walked.

Normally, when I walk, I go to the hydroponics gardens first, but I knew I would find Trance there. I did not want to discuss this with her. I would not have wanted to talk with her about my ... emotions ... even if she were still the purple girl who had first come aboard me. So I went to the observation deck instead. It has plants, but it also has the view of the stars that I see as a ship -- only this room allows me to see the view the way humans would, which is not the same as with sensors.

When I reached the windows I saw Tyr standing, his hands on the rail, watching the patterns of stars in the neighboring galaxy. He turned and nodded to me as I took a place near him.

Tyr is difficult for me to think about. He's an equation with several important variables left to be filled in later, a balancing act on a wire I don't always see. He gives Dylan more trouble than anyone else on the ship, but he's also a superb soldier, fighting bravely to protect the crew. For that alone I have to respect him, even if I don't understand a great deal more about him.

"You're ... upset. Is something amiss?" he said, after a while.

"I had to kill a child today." Even the words sounded wrong. "That is not my job. I'm a warship. I don't make war on children."

"But wars happen to children, too." His voice was soft. "It was not your fault."

"That doesn't make it any better."

"Did you protect the crew in doing what you did?"

I nodded. "That's the only reason. She couldn't affect me." Despite the Bokor's beliefs, I was not alive enough in the right way for them to possess me in the way they possessed Trance.

"If she had killed all of us -- or even just Harper -- that would affect you."

"Yes." I could feel him standing next to me. I could hear him breathe and, if I chose, hear the quiet rush of the blood within his body. He was so undeniably alive. "Tyr, how do you deal with death? Humans live such a short time. How do you face it?"

"I ... don't. I try not to, at any rate." His expression was solemn. "I believe that time spent thinking about it is time wasted, and however much time I may have, there is not enough for me to want to waste any of it. Can you understand that?"

I followed the track of an errant comet, skidding past a double star in a glittering path of dust. "I may be around for much longer than that. Theoretically, for thousands of years."

"...And?"

I shook my head. "No difference."

"No." His eyes seemed to be darker than usual. "Beka nearly died."

"Yes. Actually, the only one of you who might have survived them is Harper."

"Harper?"

"He informed me he was 'wearing protection'. And I have no doubt he would have evaded them for a long time."

"If one could only get the little professor to remember to take care of himself," Tyr growled.

I listened to the low notes in his voice. "It might seem to the average onlooker," I said slowly, "that you and I were both becoming ..."

"Emotionally involved with the crew?" He raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it fortunate that we both know what an illusion that appearance of involvement might be?"

"Yes, isn't it?" I blinked; the comet seemed to be double for a moment, but my vision cleared and I was able to focus again. One comet, with one glittering gilded tail, not unlike Trance's new skin and hair. Change, and sameness.

But none of them interchangeable, not at all.


End file.
